The first order of business for the day is to thrash myself soundly with a big stick.
I was looking at my digital camera, and I suddenly noticed that, due to a design feature of the knob, what I'd thought was playback mode was actually camera mode, and vice versa. With a sinking feeling in the gut of my stomach, I tried connecting the camera to the laptop. And the Twain window popped up.
So that's $23 or so for the hub, $30 for the hardware repair fee and $180 for the new AMD Athlon XP 2000 CPU spent so far on this fiasco. Hallelujah. My wits had deserted me. Mayhap it was a hex.
Anyhow, trying to solve my dilemma, I resolved to try to think like a Rational Consumer and apply Cost-Benefit analysis. Now, we assume that all costs incurred till now are sunk costs. So getting a new CPU will cost $180. A new computer would cost at least $1000, and that's already an impossibly low quote, doubtless with many corners cut. Assuming it lasts for an unrealistic 36 months, a new CPU would be good value if it lasts for more than 6.48 months. Since the hardware warranty is 1 year, rational analysis leads me to conclude that I should get the CPU. Voila. The dismal science does have its uses.
Now that that is done, here follows a retelling of my misadventures for the night.
Today was RJ Evil Cult's (Chorale) concert, Vocal Exploits XV/XVI (I forget). For a myriad of reasons, some conventional, others less so, I had some measure of desire to go down, and less than a week ago, Screwed Up Girl assured me that she'd gotten tickets for all of us. Having the wonderful luck that she has, however, her tickets got sold off, so those of us trusting in her means were screwed. However, it was widely known that The Evil One (TBS), being generous and benevolent, did not mind crashers, so I decided to attempt a crashing for perhaps the first time in my life (which tells you how much of a guai kia I am in many areas). I wouldn't have minded paying $6 for the "Raffles Junior College Building Fund", you understand, but there were simply no tickets left.
Striding into the Concourse, I was met with a barricade, manned by faithful students (probably Councillors, but I didn't look at their badges). Filling up a SARS declaration form, I honestly (if stupidly) ticked yes under "Do you have a cough etc" - since I lie badly and my coughs would have attracted attention anyhow - and was thus turned away by David Liew and friends, as the school somehow did not have any thermometers on hand. Dammit, I am supposed to take my temperature twice daily in camp anyway. I should have brought my own. Anyhow, I was asked to leave, and offered a refund of my ticket, but not having paid anything, I felt compelled to turn down this offer (as I did again later, when I was offered a refund yet again).
Exiting the school and mulling over my options, David, Adela and a certain person who shall remain unnamed (and whose pimples have considerably decreased since the last time I saw him/her - good for him/her!) appeared from some vehicles and egged me on, pointing out that I'd gone all the way there already. And so, refusing to slink away ignominiously, my tail hanging between my legs, I drew upon the intimate knowledge of the RJC school compound I have, which only alumni possess, and secreted myself into the complex by means of a secret entrance (through the science labs), a dilapidated looking area which they'd neglected to barricade.
Skulking around in the shadows by the back gate, waiting for the concert to start and the wakeful vigilance of the ushers to lapse, I was accosted by this girl in beach wear, who called, "Mr Liew!" after me. Oh, the horror! Anyhow, after she realised I was not the person she thought I was, she and her friend stood at one end of the covered walkway and asked, "How is it?". Having no idea what in blazers they were referring to, I wagered a guess that they were waiting for people and wanted to make an impression, albeit the back gate was locked. I was wrong, and was enlightened that she was referring to the posters they'd affixed to the pillars. She then asked me what I thought they were for. Looking at the posters, I saw a vague representation of something, in modern art. I'd only an inkling of what the posters were for, so I cheated and peered closely at them, and saw "Raffles Players" at the top of them. I then replied, "Pretentious plays... Post-modernist pretentious plays" and walked off. I hope she wasn't too disheartened :)
After the concert started I tried, numerous times, to peek into LT1 and gauge the vigilance of the ushers. Amazingly, they remained watchful after the first few songs, and one even popped his head out and asked, "Do you have a ticket?", to which I replied, "No". Others loitered around the doors at various times, and were shouted at by David Liew - 'crashers not allowed' (directly contradicting the instructions of TBS himself!). I'm sure some did get in though, despite his proclamations of having checked all suspected gatecrashers and finding everything to be in order, which is a testament to my abyssal and teething crashing skills (as I said, this is the first time I have tried such a stunt) Hanging around the doors, I heard only snatches of music, so Huijun and Huimei will have to be disappointed (I am flattered that the former thinks that I am better than her in this field because I am more 'musically inclined'). I did see the new costumes, designed by the Boss himself, though. The female costume looks like Malay dress gone hideously wrong, and I will not torture my senses trying to recall its look. The male costume looks a smidgen better - mainly the green cravat has become maroon.
When the small groups came up with their items, I loitered around the LT1 area, and suddenly Shun Loong (in the Combat Medic course now!) and Zher Ee (with a nice mane now!) came running by to greet their juniors. Soon, though, the security force descended upon us three. The other two went up to talk to the choir teacher, and were accused of trying to use her to get in. We then fled to the canteen. We had nary a moment's peace, though, before David Liew came up to chase us three out. The other two proceeded to try to talk with Mr Liew, while I just smiled beatifically, if resignedly. In essence, though we were alumni, we were not even permitted to sit in the canteen, on pain of the calling of the police (even though none of us had a fever), to await the concert's end because we had 'no reason' to be in the school. In the end, we were quite disgusted. Rules are rules, but dumb rules are dumb rules, bureaucrats make a lot of silly ones, and nobody ever follows them. If David Liew wants to go by the book (as usual) though, i suppose that's his prerogative. Maybe it's just me, but RJC has become a lot more strict these days.
I was delayed a little by David Liew, who talked to me surprisingly jovially about various matters, and so lost sight of Zher Ee and Shun Loong. However, they were found, as I predicted, at the McDonalds-Soya Bean outlet in Ghim Moh - a favourite haunt of RJ students, where the former was complaining merrily away to his mother and where the soya bean I drank gave me tummy pain later. I wonder what will come of all this.
With the last hope of doing some of what I'd set out to do, I waited outside the gates. And saw Mengchuan, who proclaimed the concert to be "the best free concert ever" (Grr), and Kelvin, who had both a tulip and a rose ("I'm both a guy and a girl. Guys get tulips, girls get roses. So I'm both!")
I've been advised, on more than one occasion, that the reach of the SAF is far, and so it is not good or 'worth it' to do anything to offend it. Nonetheless, I proceed, with some measure of circumspection and level-headedness. I suppose that's the idealism of youth. Best to get things done before I get too serious-cynical and practical.
Argh.
As some might know, my CPU got fried by an errant USB hub.
I brought it to a shop (a neighbourhood type), and they charge $180 for an athlon xp 2000. However, it's about $140 on average at Sim Lim and supposedly they'll install it for free, and I can bring my motherboard manual down to ask if it's compatible with the chip.
Meanwhile my father's going on about how a new computer will break down less and have a 1 year on site, 2 year carry in warranty. He is also gloating about how he warned me not to upgrade 1 1/2 years ago, and how it was very expensive.
So far: the fan's fallen out last year, and the motherboard exploded when I installed a new power supply. So. Do I get a new one?
If I can get one with a tower unit only, without external peripherals I already have, it should be cheaper, but I'm not sure how many companies offer that service. I thought they only sell bundled systems. And then what happens to my old data? I suspect the warranty will be voided if I install an extra hard disk.
I'm leaning towards going to a shop and buying a new system, asking them to install my old hdds and selling off my old parts for a pittance. My sister brings up a good point - it might be worth the money just to forestall the bitching and nagging.
I don't know why I've run into so many problems with this custom built system. Everyone else seems to be having few or no problems with their DIY rigs. I think money wise I haven't been too short-changed, as compared to if I'd gotten a new computer. In terms of frustration, though...
As some might know, my CPU got fried by an errant USB hub.
I brought it to a shop (a neighbourhood type), and they charge $180 for an athlon xp 2000. However, it's about $140 on average at Sim Lim and supposedly they'll install it for free, and I can bring my motherboard manual down to ask if it's compatible with the chip.
Meanwhile my father's going on about how a new computer will break down less and have a 1 year on site, 2 year carry in warranty. He is also gloating about how he warned me not to upgrade 1 1/2 years ago, and how it was very expensive.
So far: the fan's fallen out last year, and the motherboard exploded when I installed a new power supply. So. Do I get a new one?
If I can get one with a tower unit only, without external peripherals I already have, it should be cheaper, but I'm not sure how many companies offer that service. I thought they only sell bundled systems. And then what happens to my old data? I suspect the warranty will be voided if I install an extra hard disk.
I'm leaning towards going to a shop and buying a new system, asking them to install my old hdds and selling off my old parts for a pittance. My sister brings up a good point - it might be worth the money just to forestall the bitching and nagging.
I don't know why I've run into so many problems with this custom built system. Everyone else seems to be having few or no problems with their DIY rigs. I think money wise I haven't been too short-changed, as compared to if I'd gotten a new computer. In terms of frustration, though...
Thursday, May 15, 2003
Predators to Replace Nurses, Thermal Scanners at Changi
"In its effort to improve the detection of potential SARS spreaders, the Gahmen has replaced nurses and thermal scanners at Changi Airport with Predators, violent alien warriors that can detect body heat...."
Finally, something -halfway- decent for a change. I usually get really irritated by talkingcock.com's articles because they are so darn corny, lame, shallow, crass and ultimately - shitty. The basic concept is good, but the writing sucks, more often than not. And to think many lawyers, civil servants and doctors supposedly write for them. Maybe it's to cater to Singaporean's brand of toilet humour. Lucky Mr Brown has just come up with Singapore National Education 84!
"Our nurses and doctors are waging a war with Death itself! What can we do to show our support and concern? I know! We'll write them A National Song!" - Heh
"That even if you need a wheel chair to get around you do not qualify for a claim under Eldershield, so long as you can somehow lower yourself into the wheelchair. If you can somehow move one arm and bring food to your mouth you do not qualify. So long as one hand can clean your ass you are deemed not disabled. It does not matter if you need help to go to the toilet.
Only the truly Vegetable need apply." - Ooh, wicked. I love it.
"That DPM Lee was headhunted too.
"From the Straits Times on 04/10/2002
DPM head-hunted too
'I received an e-mail from a company called Migration Expert Australia. It asked me if I knew that Australia is currently looking for skilled and business migrants, and whether I was interested to become an Australian PR. It invited me to visit its website, and to try out a free virtual points test to see if I would qualify. If I was not interested, never mind, please help forward the e-mail to someone whom I think may be interested.' - Mr Lee, on the global contest to attract talent"
Hey, that looks like the same email my unemployed friend received in his inbox too! Small world, man. I also hear there is a global contest to attract investors in making good money by helping Nigerians get millions out of the country. I get these emails everyday so they must be true." - HAHA.
My 2 month old dry cough has morphed into a moist cough. Perhaps it will become a wet cough soon.
Meanwhile my parents still go on about how having a cough makes you more suscpetible to SARS. Bah.
The Associate would like to point out, and has been pestering me to do so for a while as he is too lazy to do so, that the Imperial Double Headed Eagle I'm using as my current blog head was only adopted by the Hapsburgs after the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved by Napoleon Bonaparte.
"In its effort to improve the detection of potential SARS spreaders, the Gahmen has replaced nurses and thermal scanners at Changi Airport with Predators, violent alien warriors that can detect body heat...."
Finally, something -halfway- decent for a change. I usually get really irritated by talkingcock.com's articles because they are so darn corny, lame, shallow, crass and ultimately - shitty. The basic concept is good, but the writing sucks, more often than not. And to think many lawyers, civil servants and doctors supposedly write for them. Maybe it's to cater to Singaporean's brand of toilet humour. Lucky Mr Brown has just come up with Singapore National Education 84!
"Our nurses and doctors are waging a war with Death itself! What can we do to show our support and concern? I know! We'll write them A National Song!" - Heh
"That even if you need a wheel chair to get around you do not qualify for a claim under Eldershield, so long as you can somehow lower yourself into the wheelchair. If you can somehow move one arm and bring food to your mouth you do not qualify. So long as one hand can clean your ass you are deemed not disabled. It does not matter if you need help to go to the toilet.
Only the truly Vegetable need apply." - Ooh, wicked. I love it.
"That DPM Lee was headhunted too.
"From the Straits Times on 04/10/2002
DPM head-hunted too
'I received an e-mail from a company called Migration Expert Australia. It asked me if I knew that Australia is currently looking for skilled and business migrants, and whether I was interested to become an Australian PR. It invited me to visit its website, and to try out a free virtual points test to see if I would qualify. If I was not interested, never mind, please help forward the e-mail to someone whom I think may be interested.' - Mr Lee, on the global contest to attract talent"
Hey, that looks like the same email my unemployed friend received in his inbox too! Small world, man. I also hear there is a global contest to attract investors in making good money by helping Nigerians get millions out of the country. I get these emails everyday so they must be true." - HAHA.
My 2 month old dry cough has morphed into a moist cough. Perhaps it will become a wet cough soon.
Meanwhile my parents still go on about how having a cough makes you more suscpetible to SARS. Bah.
The Associate would like to point out, and has been pestering me to do so for a while as he is too lazy to do so, that the Imperial Double Headed Eagle I'm using as my current blog head was only adopted by the Hapsburgs after the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved by Napoleon Bonaparte.
Wonderful. The following line will apparently crash IE.
"<input type crash>"
Insert anything else undefined you want in place of "crash" :)
Top 10 Things I Hate About Star Trek - So much for this grossly overrated social phenomenon
Badger rampage injures five
"<input type crash>"
Insert anything else undefined you want in place of "crash" :)
Top 10 Things I Hate About Star Trek - So much for this grossly overrated social phenomenon
Badger rampage injures five
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Suddenly, I have 5 people telling me, in the same day, about the RJ Alumni page, as if it's some new and wondrous thing.
Please, it's been around since the end of J2, when I went to have a look. Only now it has a new interface and you can choose avatars. Big deal. Been there, done that.
I did enter my nick as Agagooga, though. *shrug*
Please, it's been around since the end of J2, when I went to have a look. Only now it has a new interface and you can choose avatars. Big deal. Been there, done that.
I did enter my nick as Agagooga, though. *shrug*
Monday, May 12, 2003
It seems that a good portion of my fellow medics go through a vegetarian phase. First Andrew, then Sinsiang, then Yiliang, then Jason for a short while and now Ban Xiong, who seems to have held out the longest. Perhaps this is because the normal cookhouse food sucks. Or perhaps they all have this masochistic streak which can only be satisfied by eating food which is even more lacking in variety than normal cookhouse food. In any case, they are all fair weather vegetarians, never eating the vegetarian breakfast. Hmmph.
Thinking of more unsavoury names for people who call me 'Jiabao', I came up with 'Booger' (For the unenlightened, a booger is the thing which comes out when you dig your nose). Unfortunately, I don't have anyone to call that yet, so I'll just have to wait. Maybe if Sinsiang becomes obnoxious enough, he can dump the 'Bob' and become 'Booger'! On a related note, Ban Xiong suggests 'Tom', 'Dick' and 'Harry' as additional names. Hehe.
I've gotten a Number 3 nametag that says 'AGAGOOGA', and it now takes pride of place on my black camp sling bag above the RJ and RV badges. Yeh! A fringe benefit of getting it is hearing people attempting to pronounce it, and mangling its pronunciation - aww. Some reactions: "what does agagooga mean anyway? sounds like a tribal orgasm", "omg you actually paid for such bo liao crap? You've spent far too long in the army I fear".
Piqued by the rats scuttling around the Medical Centre, I decided to set up an improvised rat trap. I remove the cover from a dustbin, put it beside a water cooler and placed a packet of the 'Black Meal' (where most of the dishes are black and unappealing) at the bottom. The next day, I found 3 small rats at the bottom of the dustbin. I was going to kill them, but had to go out on detail, and by the time I returned, someone else - Max, I'm told - had killed them by pouring Sudol in. I am rather delighted by my success, but Dennis tells me that he caught 6 rats this way before - and without baiting them with food too. More pertinently, the 2 giant rats are strong enough to leap out of the dustbin, so I will have to come up with a scheme to trap them.
For not a short while, I have been doing what few stay-in personnel do - washing my uniforms. I was going to resolve to wash them more often, so that I could wear a new set everyday, due to the curse that has been laid on me which makes me unable to be like others, who use 2 sets of uniforms a week, but I am demoralised, for apparently washing them in-camp does not get rid of the foul odour. Verily, I am vexed.
Our spanking new VCD player is being used to watch Initial D. So far it looks rather brainless, at least when the characters are driving, with beads of sweat running down their faces. I think I have come to a conclusion - Anime is either brainless or inexplicable! Argh. I wonder if I will ever get to use my fair share of it. Probably not, seeing as the TV is always in use when I am in the bunk. No matter, I will take it as my sacrifice for the sake of communal harmony.
Another disadvantage of senseless, overly-rigid and unthinking regimentation: It gets in the way of essential work, all in the pursuit of vague, undefined and unlikely rewards. Methinks it might even lead to degraded combat performance.
We now have to wash the toilet twice a day, at 1:00pm in addition to the morning's area cleaning. Not only is this unfair, it is unnecessary!
It's not fair. Females get all sorts of funky names. Apart from the traditional types of names (eg Agatha, Bernadette), they can be named after months (April, May), precious stones (eg Crystal, Ruby. Though I've yet to see a Lapis Lazuli), virtues or emotions (Joy, Faith, Love... Though oddly no one is called 'Chastity') and god knows what else. How come males get stuck with boring names? 'Frank' is perhaps the only acceptable male attribute-name, though I suspect that Franks are named after the Franks, and not the quality of frankness. I've yet to see a 'Justice' or 'Wisdom" (though we all know and love 'Just Wong'), and the odd exceptions like 'Noodle' are confined to Hong Kong. Perhaps the closest we can get is 'Sunny' - not very impressive next to the stable of girls' names.
More silliness: Project Islamic HOPE claims X-Men 2 is anti-Muslim, for William Stryker is shown wearing a ring with 'Allah' inscribed on it. "'It�s a major slap in the face to Muslims worldwide that this portrayal be made when the X-men in the comics and movies have always fought against prejudice in society', said the group�s director Najee Ali. 'It was done intentionally,' he said. 'It�s another case of Islamic phobia in Hollywood which has always demonized Arabs and Muslims, but after 9/11 we thought that American Jews and Muslims would work together for peace.'" Surely the ring said 'Allah'. How could it not, when the name of Allah occurs naturally in so many places? Why stop at this anyway? William Stryker has a beard and moustache - is Brian Singer trying to say that men with Vietnam Veterans with facial hair are evil, crazed xenophobes and plot for world domination? Also, Magneto is Jewish. Tada - irrefutable proof of anti-Semitism! Xavier is bald and disabled - surely a slap in the face for bald men and advocates for the handicapped. Hell, Nightcrawler and Beast are blue, so for people with rare mutations resulting in blue skin, this is eminently insulting.
I've been playing Little Fighter 2, but somehow I can't attain the proficiency level that others can. Argh.
My mother's idea of a good book seems to differ greatly from mine. Among other things, she likes inspirational titles (like a zillionth helping of Chicken Soup for the Castrated African Hermaphrodite's Soul) and biographies. Perhaps, too, when one ages, one favours books that evoke nostalgia and remind one of one's younger days. Recently, she highly recommended 'Frog Under A Coconut Shell' to me, a book of memoirs by Josephine Chia, a Peranakan (Nonya, to be specific). Now, as faithful readers might know, I am not a fan of local writing as much of it sucks. This is probably true of most types of writing, but somehow it seems to be more noticeable in local works, which all seem to be edited poorly - if at all.
Personally, I found the book immensely irritating. It is perhaps the most indulgent book I have ever read, surpassing, by far, the most horrific of my output. It is basically an extended, cringe-inducing soliloquy. The narrative is often broken for many paragraphs, while the author speculates, comments, reminisces, moralises and pontificates about something only peripherally related to what she was talking about previously. When that doesn't happen, the author jumps from topic to topic and thread to thread haphazardly, through not just time, but space also, with only the slightest amount of cohesion. The undisciplined ranting puts me in mind of Kenneth Tan at his worst.
Perhaps an extract will illustrate my points. Page 22: "As if it was a legacy she had handed me, I too hated the sight of the slaughtered chickens writhing on the ground or running around in a frenzy until they realised that they were supposed to be dead. The vision bothered me so much that I eventually gave up eating chicken or anything that had legs to run around with. Has this something to do with my mother or was this my own uninfluenced choice? Sometimes, I wonder where the Me who is my mother's daughter ends and the Me who is entirely myself begins." This theme is cringe-worthy enough the first time, but when it is repeated several times, it really becomes intolerable. I suspect that the repetition of this, among other themes, is the author's attempt to vindicate herself and assuage her guilt.
The author professes that this book is her mother's story, but bits of her life keep slipping past her guard and into her book, and she even half-apologises with the platitude, "but that is another story". Perhaps a lapse could be tolerated occasionally, but they occur with disturbing frequency and so are unforgivable.
Some parts are unconsciously ironic. Take, for example, this classic line: "He told me that my capacity to learn Arithmetic was minimal, which was true, and that I get all the English tenses mixed up, which was also true". A Freudian slip, perchance?
Quotes:
Have you paid for the VCD player? [Me: Yes!] Well it doesn't look as if you'll be able to use it.
Gabriel! Check it out. [Me: S.C. !] Suck Cock. My name is 'Suck Cock'
[To me] Don't roll up your sleeves, you look like an RGS girl.
All my medics don't have girlfriends. All gay, is it?
I'm setting up a business next time. Lak Sat Bar.
Thinking of more unsavoury names for people who call me 'Jiabao', I came up with 'Booger' (For the unenlightened, a booger is the thing which comes out when you dig your nose). Unfortunately, I don't have anyone to call that yet, so I'll just have to wait. Maybe if Sinsiang becomes obnoxious enough, he can dump the 'Bob' and become 'Booger'! On a related note, Ban Xiong suggests 'Tom', 'Dick' and 'Harry' as additional names. Hehe.
I've gotten a Number 3 nametag that says 'AGAGOOGA', and it now takes pride of place on my black camp sling bag above the RJ and RV badges. Yeh! A fringe benefit of getting it is hearing people attempting to pronounce it, and mangling its pronunciation - aww. Some reactions: "what does agagooga mean anyway? sounds like a tribal orgasm", "omg you actually paid for such bo liao crap? You've spent far too long in the army I fear".
Piqued by the rats scuttling around the Medical Centre, I decided to set up an improvised rat trap. I remove the cover from a dustbin, put it beside a water cooler and placed a packet of the 'Black Meal' (where most of the dishes are black and unappealing) at the bottom. The next day, I found 3 small rats at the bottom of the dustbin. I was going to kill them, but had to go out on detail, and by the time I returned, someone else - Max, I'm told - had killed them by pouring Sudol in. I am rather delighted by my success, but Dennis tells me that he caught 6 rats this way before - and without baiting them with food too. More pertinently, the 2 giant rats are strong enough to leap out of the dustbin, so I will have to come up with a scheme to trap them.
For not a short while, I have been doing what few stay-in personnel do - washing my uniforms. I was going to resolve to wash them more often, so that I could wear a new set everyday, due to the curse that has been laid on me which makes me unable to be like others, who use 2 sets of uniforms a week, but I am demoralised, for apparently washing them in-camp does not get rid of the foul odour. Verily, I am vexed.
Our spanking new VCD player is being used to watch Initial D. So far it looks rather brainless, at least when the characters are driving, with beads of sweat running down their faces. I think I have come to a conclusion - Anime is either brainless or inexplicable! Argh. I wonder if I will ever get to use my fair share of it. Probably not, seeing as the TV is always in use when I am in the bunk. No matter, I will take it as my sacrifice for the sake of communal harmony.
Another disadvantage of senseless, overly-rigid and unthinking regimentation: It gets in the way of essential work, all in the pursuit of vague, undefined and unlikely rewards. Methinks it might even lead to degraded combat performance.
We now have to wash the toilet twice a day, at 1:00pm in addition to the morning's area cleaning. Not only is this unfair, it is unnecessary!
It's not fair. Females get all sorts of funky names. Apart from the traditional types of names (eg Agatha, Bernadette), they can be named after months (April, May), precious stones (eg Crystal, Ruby. Though I've yet to see a Lapis Lazuli), virtues or emotions (Joy, Faith, Love... Though oddly no one is called 'Chastity') and god knows what else. How come males get stuck with boring names? 'Frank' is perhaps the only acceptable male attribute-name, though I suspect that Franks are named after the Franks, and not the quality of frankness. I've yet to see a 'Justice' or 'Wisdom" (though we all know and love 'Just Wong'), and the odd exceptions like 'Noodle' are confined to Hong Kong. Perhaps the closest we can get is 'Sunny' - not very impressive next to the stable of girls' names.
More silliness: Project Islamic HOPE claims X-Men 2 is anti-Muslim, for William Stryker is shown wearing a ring with 'Allah' inscribed on it. "'It�s a major slap in the face to Muslims worldwide that this portrayal be made when the X-men in the comics and movies have always fought against prejudice in society', said the group�s director Najee Ali. 'It was done intentionally,' he said. 'It�s another case of Islamic phobia in Hollywood which has always demonized Arabs and Muslims, but after 9/11 we thought that American Jews and Muslims would work together for peace.'" Surely the ring said 'Allah'. How could it not, when the name of Allah occurs naturally in so many places? Why stop at this anyway? William Stryker has a beard and moustache - is Brian Singer trying to say that men with Vietnam Veterans with facial hair are evil, crazed xenophobes and plot for world domination? Also, Magneto is Jewish. Tada - irrefutable proof of anti-Semitism! Xavier is bald and disabled - surely a slap in the face for bald men and advocates for the handicapped. Hell, Nightcrawler and Beast are blue, so for people with rare mutations resulting in blue skin, this is eminently insulting.
I've been playing Little Fighter 2, but somehow I can't attain the proficiency level that others can. Argh.
My mother's idea of a good book seems to differ greatly from mine. Among other things, she likes inspirational titles (like a zillionth helping of Chicken Soup for the Castrated African Hermaphrodite's Soul) and biographies. Perhaps, too, when one ages, one favours books that evoke nostalgia and remind one of one's younger days. Recently, she highly recommended 'Frog Under A Coconut Shell' to me, a book of memoirs by Josephine Chia, a Peranakan (Nonya, to be specific). Now, as faithful readers might know, I am not a fan of local writing as much of it sucks. This is probably true of most types of writing, but somehow it seems to be more noticeable in local works, which all seem to be edited poorly - if at all.
Personally, I found the book immensely irritating. It is perhaps the most indulgent book I have ever read, surpassing, by far, the most horrific of my output. It is basically an extended, cringe-inducing soliloquy. The narrative is often broken for many paragraphs, while the author speculates, comments, reminisces, moralises and pontificates about something only peripherally related to what she was talking about previously. When that doesn't happen, the author jumps from topic to topic and thread to thread haphazardly, through not just time, but space also, with only the slightest amount of cohesion. The undisciplined ranting puts me in mind of Kenneth Tan at his worst.
Perhaps an extract will illustrate my points. Page 22: "As if it was a legacy she had handed me, I too hated the sight of the slaughtered chickens writhing on the ground or running around in a frenzy until they realised that they were supposed to be dead. The vision bothered me so much that I eventually gave up eating chicken or anything that had legs to run around with. Has this something to do with my mother or was this my own uninfluenced choice? Sometimes, I wonder where the Me who is my mother's daughter ends and the Me who is entirely myself begins." This theme is cringe-worthy enough the first time, but when it is repeated several times, it really becomes intolerable. I suspect that the repetition of this, among other themes, is the author's attempt to vindicate herself and assuage her guilt.
The author professes that this book is her mother's story, but bits of her life keep slipping past her guard and into her book, and she even half-apologises with the platitude, "but that is another story". Perhaps a lapse could be tolerated occasionally, but they occur with disturbing frequency and so are unforgivable.
Some parts are unconsciously ironic. Take, for example, this classic line: "He told me that my capacity to learn Arithmetic was minimal, which was true, and that I get all the English tenses mixed up, which was also true". A Freudian slip, perchance?
Quotes:
Have you paid for the VCD player? [Me: Yes!] Well it doesn't look as if you'll be able to use it.
Gabriel! Check it out. [Me: S.C. !] Suck Cock. My name is 'Suck Cock'
[To me] Don't roll up your sleeves, you look like an RGS girl.
All my medics don't have girlfriends. All gay, is it?
I'm setting up a business next time. Lak Sat Bar.
Sunday, May 11, 2003
"I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion." - James Buchanan
"Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense." - Chapman Cohen
"The universe displays no proof of an all-directing mind." - Auguste Comte
"I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose." - Clarence Darrow
"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." - Richard Dawkins
"I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God." - Thomas Edison
"As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." - Benjamin Franklin
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches." - Benjamin Franklin
"The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance called 'faith.'" - Robert Ingersoll
If the Bible and my brain are both the work of the same Infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and my brain do not agree? Robert G. Ingersoll
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." - Delos B. McKown
"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." - Gene Roddenberry
"It is sad that while science moves ahead in exciting new areas of research, fine-tuning our knowledge of how life originated and evolved, creationists remain mired in medieval debates about angels on the head of a pin and animals in the belly of an Ark." - Michael Shermer
"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand." - Mark Twain
I come here to combat the fraud and illusion of your conventional, institutionalized religion. As with all such religions, your institution moves toward cowardice, it moves toward mediocrity, inertia, and self-satisfaction.
-Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
I'm going to rub your faces in things you try to avoid. I don't find it strange that all you want to believe in is only that which comforts you. How else do humans invent the traps which betray us into mediocrity? How else do we define cowardice? -Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
....it is with God we must be most careful: for He makes such a powerful appeal to what is lowest in human nature -- our feeling of insufficiency, fear of the unknown, personal failings; above all our monstrous egotism which sees in the martyr's crown an athletic prize which is really hard to attain. Lawrence Durrell
If religion cannot restrain evil, it cannot claim effective power for good. Morris Cohen
It is usually when men are at their most religious that they behave with the least sense and the greatest cruelty. Ilka Chase
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. Thomas Paine
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile. Kurt Vonnegut
The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error if error seduces them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master.; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. Gustave Le Bon
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent--it says so right there on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills." Lazarus Long (Robert A Heinlein)
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance... logic can be happily tossed out the window. Stephen King
Man's best friend is his dogma. Timothy Leary
There is no place in a fantic's head where reason can enter. Napoleon Bonaparte
Only fraud and falsehood dread examination . Truth invites it . Thomas Cooper
Eternal damnation. What a cruel hoax your priests have inflicted on your people. Souls change. Only God is eternal-- and what kind of God would damn any created thing eternally? What sin could possibly be so great? -A. A. Attanasio, The Dragon and the Unicorn
1) If your neighbor's dog killed your child, and you had the power to chain this dog, blast him with blow torches, and the dog not die as a result, how long would you torture the dog for its terrible crime?
A) One Day
B) One Month
C) One Year
D) Eternity
2) As a loving parent, you give life to 5 children and give them free will to do as they see best. Each child goes his/her own way. One becomes a Buddhist, one becomes an Islam, one becomes a Christian, one becomes a Wicca, and one believes in no religion. Only one of your children believes as you do. What would you do regarding your 4 children who do not believe the same way you do?
A) I would kill them.
B) I would disown them.
C) I would torture them for eternity in hell.
D) I would love them and accept them as they are.
3) If you had a critical message and wanted to make sure as many people as possible would get it and understand it, how would you go about it?
A) I would send it in a time when there was no mass communications, or printing presses.
B) I would have my messenger not write anything down regarding my message, trusting others to listen and pass it on accurately and unchanged.
C) I would make sure what is written about my message was contradictory, and very confusing, so people would have a hard time understanding my message.
D) I would write down a clear, non contradictory, simple book and send it with my messenger in a time of mass communication and the printing press.
4) How would you deal with people who did not get your message, or didn't understand it, or didn't believe it was your message because it was so contradictory and confusing?
A) Kill them.
B) Torture them.
C) Damn them to eternity in hell.
D) Understand, Love them and forgive them.
5) If you were omnipotent but invisible, and you wanted to make sure that people knew you were real and wanted them to believe in you, what would you do to make this happen?
A) I would write my name on the face of the moon so all could see and have no doubt of my existence.
B) I would do things that could not be explained in any other way. Like stopping terrible things from happening, like the 911 event, or feeding all the hungry children on earth.
C) I would protect and reward those who believed in me and ignore the plight of those who do not.
D) I would do nothing at all and stay as invisible and undetectable as possible, letting everyone fend for themselves, those who believe in me and those who don't, showing no favoritism.
"It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority punishment or reward. In a nutshell, God had to kill Himself to appease Himself so that He would not have to roast us, His beloved creations, in HELL forever. He loves us more than we can ever comprehend, but if we don't return His affections, He will make us regret it for eternity. Now that is AMAZING GRACE!"
"Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense." - Chapman Cohen
"The universe displays no proof of an all-directing mind." - Auguste Comte
"I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose." - Clarence Darrow
"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." - Richard Dawkins
"I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God." - Thomas Edison
"As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." - Benjamin Franklin
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches." - Benjamin Franklin
"The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance called 'faith.'" - Robert Ingersoll
If the Bible and my brain are both the work of the same Infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and my brain do not agree? Robert G. Ingersoll
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." - Delos B. McKown
"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." - Gene Roddenberry
"It is sad that while science moves ahead in exciting new areas of research, fine-tuning our knowledge of how life originated and evolved, creationists remain mired in medieval debates about angels on the head of a pin and animals in the belly of an Ark." - Michael Shermer
"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand." - Mark Twain
I come here to combat the fraud and illusion of your conventional, institutionalized religion. As with all such religions, your institution moves toward cowardice, it moves toward mediocrity, inertia, and self-satisfaction.
-Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
I'm going to rub your faces in things you try to avoid. I don't find it strange that all you want to believe in is only that which comforts you. How else do humans invent the traps which betray us into mediocrity? How else do we define cowardice? -Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
....it is with God we must be most careful: for He makes such a powerful appeal to what is lowest in human nature -- our feeling of insufficiency, fear of the unknown, personal failings; above all our monstrous egotism which sees in the martyr's crown an athletic prize which is really hard to attain. Lawrence Durrell
If religion cannot restrain evil, it cannot claim effective power for good. Morris Cohen
It is usually when men are at their most religious that they behave with the least sense and the greatest cruelty. Ilka Chase
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. Thomas Paine
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile. Kurt Vonnegut
The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error if error seduces them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master.; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. Gustave Le Bon
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent--it says so right there on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills." Lazarus Long (Robert A Heinlein)
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance... logic can be happily tossed out the window. Stephen King
Man's best friend is his dogma. Timothy Leary
There is no place in a fantic's head where reason can enter. Napoleon Bonaparte
Only fraud and falsehood dread examination . Truth invites it . Thomas Cooper
Eternal damnation. What a cruel hoax your priests have inflicted on your people. Souls change. Only God is eternal-- and what kind of God would damn any created thing eternally? What sin could possibly be so great? -A. A. Attanasio, The Dragon and the Unicorn
1) If your neighbor's dog killed your child, and you had the power to chain this dog, blast him with blow torches, and the dog not die as a result, how long would you torture the dog for its terrible crime?
A) One Day
B) One Month
C) One Year
D) Eternity
2) As a loving parent, you give life to 5 children and give them free will to do as they see best. Each child goes his/her own way. One becomes a Buddhist, one becomes an Islam, one becomes a Christian, one becomes a Wicca, and one believes in no religion. Only one of your children believes as you do. What would you do regarding your 4 children who do not believe the same way you do?
A) I would kill them.
B) I would disown them.
C) I would torture them for eternity in hell.
D) I would love them and accept them as they are.
3) If you had a critical message and wanted to make sure as many people as possible would get it and understand it, how would you go about it?
A) I would send it in a time when there was no mass communications, or printing presses.
B) I would have my messenger not write anything down regarding my message, trusting others to listen and pass it on accurately and unchanged.
C) I would make sure what is written about my message was contradictory, and very confusing, so people would have a hard time understanding my message.
D) I would write down a clear, non contradictory, simple book and send it with my messenger in a time of mass communication and the printing press.
4) How would you deal with people who did not get your message, or didn't understand it, or didn't believe it was your message because it was so contradictory and confusing?
A) Kill them.
B) Torture them.
C) Damn them to eternity in hell.
D) Understand, Love them and forgive them.
5) If you were omnipotent but invisible, and you wanted to make sure that people knew you were real and wanted them to believe in you, what would you do to make this happen?
A) I would write my name on the face of the moon so all could see and have no doubt of my existence.
B) I would do things that could not be explained in any other way. Like stopping terrible things from happening, like the 911 event, or feeding all the hungry children on earth.
C) I would protect and reward those who believed in me and ignore the plight of those who do not.
D) I would do nothing at all and stay as invisible and undetectable as possible, letting everyone fend for themselves, those who believe in me and those who don't, showing no favoritism.
"It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority punishment or reward. In a nutshell, God had to kill Himself to appease Himself so that He would not have to roast us, His beloved creations, in HELL forever. He loves us more than we can ever comprehend, but if we don't return His affections, He will make us regret it for eternity. Now that is AMAZING GRACE!"
Courtesy of Hell's Kitchen:
According
to the US Department of Health and Human Services, animal research has
helped extend our life expectancy by 20.8 years. Of course, how you
choose to spend those extra years is up to you.
These people make reservist training sound so fun. No wonder they look forward to it.
Perhaps the best:
"Most important things to put inside full pack is T shirt, shorts, slipper and shower foam ... the rest dont have never mind .. Garters can use rubber band ...
All other important stores that are supposed to be in full pack ?, just say You don't have , not issued to you ... lost ... dog ate it , wife throw away .. all valid excuse ...
I'll never forget my first In Camp ... that time still Xin Jiao ... When they say Relvary at 7:30 ... breakfast to be taken at cookhouse at 7:45... draw stores at 8:30am ... move out by 9:15am ... I thought the timing was very serious like when NSF time ...
For reservists, it translates to ... Wake up at 8:30... 8:45 smoke break, go canteen for breakfast... sit down and talk cock .... 9:30am go back bunk toilet break ..... 10:00am go to look for storeman ... 10:30 go for morning break at canteen .... 11am draw stores .... 12 pm get ready for lunch ... 1pm at the earliest Move out .... look for hawker center for lunch .... throw Combat rations away or leave it in bunk for Bangala worker to take home ...
Got to give it to the Lao Jiaos .. respect them .. "
Tripping De-Light Fantastic - Are psychedelic drugs good for you?
they'll be able to protest 20.8 years longer. |
 |
to the US Department of Health and Human Services, animal research has
helped extend our life expectancy by 20.8 years. Of course, how you
choose to spend those extra years is up to you.
Foundation for Biomedical Research
These people make reservist training sound so fun. No wonder they look forward to it.
Perhaps the best:
"Most important things to put inside full pack is T shirt, shorts, slipper and shower foam ... the rest dont have never mind .. Garters can use rubber band ...
All other important stores that are supposed to be in full pack ?, just say You don't have , not issued to you ... lost ... dog ate it , wife throw away .. all valid excuse ...
I'll never forget my first In Camp ... that time still Xin Jiao ... When they say Relvary at 7:30 ... breakfast to be taken at cookhouse at 7:45... draw stores at 8:30am ... move out by 9:15am ... I thought the timing was very serious like when NSF time ...
For reservists, it translates to ... Wake up at 8:30... 8:45 smoke break, go canteen for breakfast... sit down and talk cock .... 9:30am go back bunk toilet break ..... 10:00am go to look for storeman ... 10:30 go for morning break at canteen .... 11am draw stores .... 12 pm get ready for lunch ... 1pm at the earliest Move out .... look for hawker center for lunch .... throw Combat rations away or leave it in bunk for Bangala worker to take home ...
Got to give it to the Lao Jiaos .. respect them .. "
Tripping De-Light Fantastic - Are psychedelic drugs good for you?